There was a period in time in which BlackBerry had hoped that their own mobile operating system would be good enough to compete against the likes of iOS and Android. While BlackBerry certainly had their loyal fans, it’s safe to say that their mobile platform never quite took off the way they had hoped.
In fact this led to many wondering about the fate of the company, and at one point in time it seemed like BlackBerry was looking to sell themselves. However fast forward to today, BlackBerry’s CEO John Chen revealed that the company is out of danger. Speaking to TheStreet, Chen goes on to claim that BlackBerry’s transformation is complete.
For those who might have missed the news, BlackBerry had previously announced that they would no longer make their own hardware. Instead they would license out their brand and their software to companies like TCL, and it seems to be paying off because for the second quarter, the company managed to rake in $56 million in licensing fees, which is almost four times what they used to make the year before.
So far TCL has released quite a few handsets under the BlackBerry brand, with the latest being the BlackBerry Motion which is a full touchscreen Android smartphone, a departure from previous releases which still featured the company’s trademark physical keyboard.
Filed in . Read more about BlackBerry.